If you have been reading about Canadian study permits for the last few months, there is a good chance you have absorbed two facts that stopped being true. Neither is obscure. Both are printed confidently on consultancy websites that rank on the first page.
The first is the amount you must prove for living costs. The second is how you apply at all.
The number moved, and the old one is everywhere
IRCC raised the cost-of-living requirement to CA$22,895 for a single applicant on 1 September 2025. Before that it was CA$20,635, which had itself replaced the CA$10,000 figure that stood unchanged for two decades until January 2024.
When we checked while building our calculator, three separate study abroad sites were quoting the CA$20,635 figure as current. A student who prepares to that number arrives at the application CA$2,260 short on the single element officers scrutinise most closely.
The amount also scales with how many people are coming. It is not one number, it is a table, and the increments are not proportional.
| People, including you | Amount required |
|---|---|
| 1 | CA$22,895 |
| 2 | CA$28,502 |
| 3 | CA$35,040 |
| 4 | CA$42,543 |
| 5 | CA$48,252 |
| 6 | CA$54,420 |
| 7 | CA$60,589 |
| Each additional person | +CA$6,170 |
Read the column heading carefully. That figure excludes tuition and excludes travel. Both sit on top of it, which is where students under-prepare even when they have the right living-cost number.
Get your own number
Your household size, your tuition, your airfare. It adds the current IRCC figure and shows which four months of statements you need.
The Student Direct Stream is gone
SDS was the fast track. Buy a GIC, meet the language score, get a quicker decision. It closed at 2pm Eastern on 8 November 2024, along with Nigeria Student Express.
Everyone now applies through the regular study permit stream. The practical consequence is that a GIC is no longer compulsory. It remains one of several accepted proofs, and it is still a clean one, but anyone telling you that you must buy a GIC to apply is working from a 2024 script.
Under the regular stream, which of these is required as proof of funds?
Canada wants history, not a frozen balance
This is the deepest difference from the UK, and it catches students who have prepared for the wrong country. The UK asks you to hold a balance untouched for 28 consecutive days. Canada asks for four months of statements.
Nothing has to sit frozen. What matters is that the money has a past. A single large deposit landing a week before you apply is the classic trigger for an officer to ask where it came from, and an answer that cannot be documented is worse than a smaller balance with a clear history.
| United Kingdom | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
| What is tested | A balance held unbroken | Where the money came from |
| Window | 28 consecutive days | 4 months of statements |
| A mid-window dip | Fatal, even for one day | Not in itself a problem |
| Living costs | £1,171 to £1,529 a month, capped at 9 months | CA$22,895 a year for one person |
| Tuition | Outstanding balance counts | Counts, and travel too |
Quebec is a separate country as far as this is concerned
Quebec selects its own students. You need a Quebec Acceptance Certificate, the CAQ, from the Ministère de l'Immigration before the federal study permit, and the financial figures are set by Quebec rather than IRCC. A single applicant needs CA$24,617 rather than CA$22,895, and Quebec asks for six months of statements instead of four.
IRCC does not publish a Quebec table at all. It points at quebec.ca, which is why so much third-party guidance quietly applies the wrong figure to Montreal applicants.
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The date this all changes again
IRCC re-indexes the living-cost table every 1 September against Statistics Canada's Low-Income Cut-Off. That means the figures above have a known expiry, and the next revision is due on 1 September 2026.
Our calculator checks itself against the IRCC page on every deployment and refuses to quietly publish a stale number. If you are reading this after that date and the tool still shows CA$22,895, verify it against the source before you move money.
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